Posts Tagged ‘Emily Franklin: Too Many Cooks’

My husband hates baked boneless/skinless chicken breast and thighs. It’s too boring, it’s too plain, it’s too “rubbery.” I like it and I find it easy, so the fact that he always complains about baked chicken makes me sad.

Emily Franklin’s recipe for “Autumnal Chicken” was one that I enjoyed. You wrap cheese and apple slices in a piece of chicken and bake it. I liked it. My husband did not. He thought it was too boring. It probably was: I should have made some kind of sauce with it. But the chicken was juicy and I just love apples cooked inside of things, so that was good in my book!

The other problem: the cheese. Ms. Franklin’s recipe calls for Istara. I cannot find “specialty” cheeses at my budget grocery store. So I used what I had in the refrigerator: cheddar. My husband did not like that either.

“Cheddar and chicken just don’t mix,” he says.

I’m getting tired of cookbooks that have recipes with fancy and expensive cheeses and other ingredients. Doesn’t anyone else live on a budget?

I made Emily Franklin’s recipe for chicken nuggets the other night. I was thinking it was a quick weekend meal, and that it would be delicious.

It certainly was delicious, but being an inexperienced cook, it took me quite a long time. I found I was breading each piece of chicken individually at first. Once I realized I could do many at once, it was much easier. (I know, I’m so dumb.) The breading Emily Franklin suggests is the normal flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs.

They were quite delicious. I whipped up some honey mustard (ingredients: honey, mustard, and a little mayonnaise). However. The time it took to fry and then bake the many little bite-sized nuggets was not made up in flavor. Next time I do it, I’m going to leave the chicken in strips, rather than small bite-sized bits.

I think Ms. Franklin’s entire point was that kids are familiar with bite-sized chicken nuggets: once they know Mom can make chicken nuggets better than McDonald’s they won’t hesitate to have Mom’s breaded chicken either. Since my son is still too young to have ever had McDonald’s, I figure I can just skip that step and go strait to the breaded chicken and other chicken dishes!

Too Many Cooks is my quest to create happy, healthy eaters without tricks (if you puree vegetables and add them to brownies, all you’re really doing is getting your kids to like brownies, which they probably already do). So this is not about sneaking healthy food into sweets. In fact, this is not about sneaking anything.

–Emily Franklin, Too Many Cooks, page 4

I really appreciate that, for that is my teaching method for my son too! I think he learns by experience and if something healthful, like vegetables, are tasty, he will learn to love them — that’s what I’m still learning myself!